I'm most curious about the role mentors will play in nReduce. From what I understand, mentorship is the secret sauce at YC and TechStars. It also seems like the hardest type of person to attract to a fledgling operation (compared to hackers and investors).
I can't believe how awesome you are for doing this. I've been following you on twitter for awhile and consider you a role model for how a new/young CEO should behave. This isn't the first time you've freely shared your knowledge, and it certainly won't be the last, so thank you! Thank you very much indeed!
True, however, I think the studios are a lot more open to technology than you realize. In my personal experience (I recently worked for the Vice President at Paramount that oversaw all VFX production for the studio), it's really up to the individual filmmakers to champion a specific technology, whether it be cameras, animation techniques, etc. Also, because the studio operates in an outsourcing style, it's also really up to the external production companies and vfx houses to choose whatever technology they feel comfortable with. To be honest, most of that is opaque from the studio's perspective, so long as the delivered product is satisfactory.
Is there a way I can learn more about your film project?
Btw, this is exactly the same reason I don't want an advertising company like Google to be involved in making my TV, videogame console, mobile phone, etc. Ads suck. :)
You would probably want to avoid IP, it seems like a complex problem to tackle. Perhaps look at other websites who are doing similar things? Good luck!
This will be your outcome: each system will race to the bottom, a market leader will emerge and converge into a monopoly, this market leader will begin exploiting everyone. Nothing will change except for the names of the companies.
I love this. You are correct on all accounts. In theory, creating a movie is about telling a story with the best possible content and the best possible experience. You might laugh at the thought, but I can promise you that all filmmakers toil under that aspiration. Actors, hair, makeup, wardrobe, location, sfx, vfx, audio, music... ALL handcrafted and laboriously created in pursuit of telling the story as best you can. Theaters, Blu-ray, Dolby, HD, 3D, all developed in the hopes of creating the best possible experience for that content. I'm not saying there isn't a lot of crap (lord knows I've personally worked on many terrible movies), but I'm speaking of ideals here. Shall we Kill Hollywood and replace everything with cat videos on Youtube? That's too easy. I can offer many suggestions on how to vindictively kill Hollywood right now, but that would be a disservice to people like you who just want to enjoy watching a movie. And it's because Hollywood contains this fantastic talent base, and enormous back catalog, that they will be around for a long time to come.
I guess my point is that the current (flawed) system at least allows for those big budget films to exist and be appreciated by the people who want to see them.
If our goal as entrepreneurs is to delight users, then we should be considering how we're impacting consumers/creators (the two users that matter IMHO) during this era of disrupting distribution (distributors being a third, less important type of user to me).
Call me naive if you wish, but people love movies and I think it's important to fight for that.
Thank you for allowing me to rant about your blog post.
You are saying exactly what I just said to another reader. Replace distribution with an open standard that has an embedded financial model, then we might have something interesting. Everything else is just a different middle man.
Blu-ray's introduction happend after digital distribution, and it's already 2/3 of the size ($2 billion vs. $3 billion). The people of the world still like physical disks. Give it another decade.
Bourgeoisie? :) I worked my way up from nothing and my perspective is simply that of someone who has seen the industry from several different angles.
Also, like any sane person, I believe that pirates are only frustrated consumers (I know I am).
But where does that leave us... how do you keep humanity entertained while "software is eating the world."
What does that technology look like? For distribution, is it an open standards network of p2p+affiliate marketing+an index fund? For creators, will it be a cost equalizing combo of reality-emulating audio engines and photorealistic cloud rendering of user-friendly 3D modeling? What happens to the concept of celebrity (celebrities = risk mitigation for movies)?
I personally think it's important to step back and think about the user experience of a movie. Can you succeed in delighting users and negating Hollywood at the same time?
I was literally 90% done with my Kill Hollywood RFS application when I saw Paul's tweet about this article and it stopped me dead in my tracks. Can anyone tell me that the Kill Hollywood is about making the world better and not simply about revenge?
I just finished ranting like a lunatic on twitter (sorry Paul), but I'm going to try and be nice here. Keep in mind that you are attacking my very livelihood. I've been working in the film industry for my entire adult life. I recently quit my job at Paramount, a key member of the "most unscrupulous of all the industrial conglomerates" and rampant exploiter of "artists they pretend to represent."
I'd like to offer my perspective as a humble filmmaker. Are there any other filmmakers here... any? I highly doubt it, the amount of ignorance I see tossed around on the subject of Kill Hollywood is simply staggering. When will I see ANY balanced perspective? One real solution? One real alternative? I can promise you that it won't happen unless Silicon Valley is willing to at least talk to a damn filmmaker about these issues. Here's my email: [email protected]. Hell, here's my cellphone: 323-963-4433. You want to kill Hollywood, call me anytime.
First, everything the RIAA and MPAA has down is WRONG. As a filmmaker whose future is on the line, I can tell you that it affects me more that it affects you. It's my livelihood, but only your inconvenience.
Now, on to the article. The author makes two technical points: sharing is easy, and storage is abundant. My response is… well, duh!
Here's a hint, killing Hollywood is NOT an engineering problem. All of the engineering problems have been solved, the technology already exists! We can instantly share a movie to all devices anywhere. We can store every type of media ever created. Thanks. It isn't helping.
The author also offers one pseudo solution about marketplaces. I hate to tell you this, but distribution is already a marketplace! Sure it might be inefficient, sure it is mostly dominated by a few key (evil) players, but it DOES exist. Paranormal Activity was made by one solitary man. It then went through a series of marketplaces and eventually pulled in $200 million dollars. I know the guy who made the film, we met when I helped make Paranormal Activity 2 and 3 (he's a former videogame developer fyi), and I can tell you that his "blood, sweat, energy and tears" paid off pretty damn well, thank you very much! Question: Can this marketplace be improved? Answer: Yes, but… here's a snapshot of what this mythical marketplace would have to replace:
Total industry size $90 billion. New movies enter the market through theaters, generate $30 billion, then proceed through windows rental>cable>VOD>DVD/Blu-ray>streaming>etc. The order can sometimes be different, what's important is that there are relative amounts of money made at each stage. A distributor might pull in $7 per ticket PER PERSON at a theater (how many friends do you take to the movies with you?), $5 per DVD/Blu-ray, and only 50 cents on streaming. [source: http://paidcontent.org/article/419-forecast-online-demand-fo...] Can your solution replace three friends going to a movie theater and generating $21 for the distributor with three friends watching Netflix and generating 50 cents? Also consider the fact that you may see a movie in theaters, then buy it on dvd, then buy a blu-ray, and THEN watch it on Netflix over the span of several years. Also, marketing is a huge problem, the cost of marketing that movie worldwide is amortized across the entire lifecycle, and is heavily front-loaded. If you skip straight to digital streaming, for example, you skip out on huge amounts of advertising. Don't believe me? Name five indie movies that came out this year. Now name five Hollywood movies. Lastly, and this is important, what Jacques fails to realize is that the cost of making new movies REQUIRES all of these windows to exist. I personally don't want to live in a world where the only movies I can watch are kickstarted documentaries. You tell me we can crowdfund a $500 million dollar Avatar without using the hedge fund approach of a major studio, and I will change my mind.
P.S. income from ALL DIGITAL is currently ~$3 billion of the $90 billion pie, why would Hollywood be in a hurry to abandon scarcity?
Ignoring everything I've said, what happens when you get your wish? I can promise you that if cut out theaters so you can stream Ironman 4 (the documentary) to your retina display iPad while sipping lattes on Powell St., the whole system will come crashing down.
Clearly the MPAA and the RIAA are assholes that need to be destroyed, but consider what you destroy along with it. Some of the greatest living storytellers on this planet are filmmakers. Tell me what you are offering James Cameron, creator of the 1st and 2nd highest grossing films of all time (almost $5 billion dollars worth of customer validation) in exchange for the theater, his medium of choice?
I believe there are solutions, LOTS of them, but we need to work together to create them.
I just left this comment over on Fred Wilson's blog (http://disq.us/536i4t). I hope that the message I'm attempting to convey is meaningful to the "Kill Hollywood" crowd on HN as well...
There are a lot of comments on this post, but I'm going to attempt to chime in from the EVIL Hollywood perspective.
First, let me make it known that I am 100% anti-SOPA/PIPA (I called my representatives six times), but the armchair punditry and belligerent "Kill Hollywood" explosion I've witnessed over the last few days has infuriated me to no end. When I left Paramount to do a software startup, at least I knew what the hell I was taking about.
Regarding Nat Torkington's rant: It's true that the tech industry "gave" us many things, HOWEVER, MP3's are meaningless without audio content, MP4 is meaningless without video content, Netflix is meaningless without movie content, iTunes is meaningless without music content... you get the point. In fact, between bittorrent and Netflix, it appears that half of the Internet (if not more) is used to share CONTENT. So yes, thank you for the pipes, but for the love of all that's holy, try and keep in mind what people are ACTUALLY paying for here! Hint: it's not 3G, wifi, iPads, or iPhones, those are merely the vessels to what is actually valuable to the user: the content! What do you think is the driving force behind the evolution of technology? Sheesh! I'm asking that all of you engineers take a breather and try to gain some damn perspective.
Yes, the film industry's organizational structure appears to be outdated. Yes, the theatrical distribution model seems counterintuitive. Yes, yes, yes! But... Record revenues (or close to it) continue year after year. Revenue from theaters still represents $30 billion of the ~$90 billion dollars the industry rakes in each year. Growth in China is almost 40% annually. The film industry isn't exactly in a hurry to abandon the scarcity model.
Bottom line, there are a lot of elements at play here. Please, please, please get some perspective before you go off extolling the virtues of your newest "platform." There are ways to disrupt Hollywood, both in a Schumpeterian way, and in a collaborative way, but I have yet to see anything that truly encapsulates the content industry's needs in a meaningful way.
Thanks for listening to my rant!
P.S.Crowd funding is to killing Hollywood, as Kickstarter is to killing Apple.